I have just installed an eq6 in my observatory. Much to my chagrin, the is a terrible noise when winding upto speed and winding down to a stop in the declination axis. I have tried readjusting all the gears and worm to no effect, so I pulled the dec motor assembly out of the mount itself and tested it on the bench and it is the culprit making the noise.

So my question is the eq6 goto version have the same motors as a heq5 non goto? as I can get one of these second hand at a good price.

Or if anyone has a suggestion on how to fix the same issue.

It's a little frustrating to find that even though the mount is under warranty the shop wont touch it because I opened the side.

Aren't they all like that though? Something to do with the normal way stepper motors ramp up and down? I don't have either one of those mounts but I've seen and heard a lot of them at star parties - a LOT of them! - and they all made the same winding up and winding down rattly noises. You probably have nothing to worry about. Plus it's bound to be way louder in an enclosed space too. They are incredibly quiet when slow slewing and tracking which makes them easy to wander in to when at a dark star party site! Anyhow, that's the trouble with buying new gear - you're always trying to find something wrong with it because you expect to find something wrong with it!

One the newer EQ6/Atlas mounts, they changed the way they secure the transfer gear to the motor. It used to be a threaded bolt but is now just a stud (or maybe post is a better word) without any threading at all. We surmise that the rattling noise is being caused by play in this connection but this is just a somewhat educated guess - on a fellow club members Atlas we were able to noticeably reduce the severity of the noise by loosening the allen screws that hold this stud on to the motor and pressing down a bit on the stud while tightening it back up. Even so the noise never totally went away.

At the end of the day if this is the noise I think it is then it is somewhat normal for the mount and will not hurt anything.